Since 2003, Robert Kirkman has been making our hearts race with his zombie apocalypse drama, The Walking Dead. These days, he’s thrilling a much wider audience thanks to the translation of his bestselling comic book and graphic novel series to the small screen on AMC, but the author has a lot more up his sleeves than decomposing corpses and survival horror.
Kirkman has started his own imprint, called Skybound, under the banner of The Walking Dead’s publisher Image Comics, and he is far busier than he’s ever been as a result. The imprint is well on its way to prominence with The Infinite, a time-travel story written by Kirkman and illustrated by Rob Liefeld as well as Super Dinosaur, an all-ages comic also by Kirkman and artist Jason Howard. He’s also set to wrap up the story of Science Dog, a back-up tale from his other famous series from Image, the super hero saga, Invincible. PW Comics Week chatted with the prolific author about his newest projects, his love of science fiction and of course, The Walking Dead.
PW Comics Week: Most recent big news from you is you’re writing a new sci-fi series for Image with Rob Liefeld called the Infinite. What can you tell us about it?
Robert Kirkman: Well, I think it’s the coolest time travel movie never made. It’s a new take on time travel. It’s about a soldier from the future that comes back to stop an imminent threat that has taken over the world in the future but the cool thing is he goes back in time to team up with a 19-year-old version of himself because he feels like the only person he can really count on is himself. And so he teams up with himself to fight this threat.
PWCW: Was it one person’s idea over another, or was it a collaborative process between you and Rob?
RK: It was kind of a spit-balling session between the two of us where we were like, “Oh, let’s do a sci-fi thing and, oh yeah we could do time travel. That’d be fun! And we could do this and we could do that,” and it was definitely a true collaboration and I don’t even recall which one of us came up with the initial idea or who added what. It was really a lot of fun to, you know, be able to sit down with a guy who’s also a buddy and kind of create something out of thin air. It’s a lot of fun.
PWCW: If you could personally travel back in time to work with yourself, at what age would you travel back to and what would you do with that man/boy that you found?
RW: I would travel back in time one week and then I would just get a bunch of work done with myself. I could use the extra week with two of me, you know, working non-stop. I also think about this, and maybe that’s odd but yeah I wouldn’t go back too far. I mean, you always do that thing where you’re like, “Ah if I could just go back in time to my 16-year-old self and tell him it’s going to be ok.” Because everybody was depressed when they were 16 but you know, screw that guy! I’m not gonna do that! He turned out ok. I’d just go back in time to get some work done.
PWCW: Well you are a very busy man these days. You’re also doing something called Super Dinosaur, debuting next month with your Astounding Wolf-Man collaborator Jason Howard. This is an all-ages book, correct? What can you tell us about that?
RK: That is true. Super Dinosaur is the story of Derek Dynamo who’s a 9-year-old super genius and he teams up with a Tyrannosaurus rex that’s been genetically altered to be nine feet tall and as intelligent as a human being and they save the world together. It’s kind of the comic book I was dying to read when I was, you know, 12, so hopefully that will work out for 12-year-olds.
PWCW: And you have something coming out for that on Free Comic Book Day?
RK: Yeah, the first issue debuts April 20 but immediately following that on Free Comic Book Day, which I believe is May something, we’re going to be putting out the Super Dinosaur origin special, which will be free and will kind of detail how Super Dinosaur was created and what the story is and what’s going on in it. It’ll be like a free primer people can go into the comic shops and get and they’ll pretty much be up-to-speed and ready to read the regular series.
PWCW: Both Super Dinosaur and the Infinite are being published under your new imprint at Image, Skybound. Do you have any particular direction for the imprint? Why did you decide to start it?
RK: Well, you know, it’s really just a branding thing so that people know that all these books are my books. It’s also about building an infrastructure around myself so that I’m not doing all the work and able to keep putting these books out just like Mike Dees did on The Walking Dead book. The main thing that Skybound does is it’s bringing new ideas into the comic book industry whether those are from me or other talented individuals that I’ve discovered and we’re trying to get more attention for. So yeah, Skybound is all about new stuff.
PWCW: On top of everything else, you’re also got a new Science Dog story with Cory Walker coming out. Tell me what fans of the dog/human hybrid can expect from this new one.
RK: The new Science Dog special is the conclusion of the Science Dog back-ups that have been running in Invincible every 25th issue for five or six years. So the story started in Invincible #25, continued in Invincible #50, continued again in Invincible #75 and now this new special is going to wrap up the story. Oddly enough, it’s kind of a cool time travel story featuring Science Dog but it’ll be much different than what we’re doing in the Infinite.
PWCW: You do seem to kind of have a thing for science fiction. If we exclude Star Trek and Star Wars, what are some of your favorite sci-fi works?
RK: You have to exclude Star Trek and Star Wars? Well I mean, Back to the Future is always cool stuff, there’s things like the Abyss, I like that. I don’t know. You’re putting me on the spot here!
PWCW: Well you know, everyone always says Star Trek and Star Wars. Those are the easy ones.
RK: Battlestar Galactica, Sliders, you know, most anything science fiction I’m a pretty big fan of I guess.
PWCW: Do you find it easier to get your calls answered these days now that you’re a "name" in Hollywood?
RK: [laughs] Well that’s news to me! No, I don’t know, I don’t call anybody in Hollywood. I don’t know, I’d have to ask my manager. I don’t know if it’s easier for him to get people on the phone or not. I was recently introduced to Quentin Tarantino and he acted like he knew who I was. So that was neat. I think I’m to the point where people act like they know who I am, like, they may have heard of my name but they don’t really know what I’m doing or recognize me or anything. So that’s a new level.
PWCW: Well Quentin Tarantino, I’d be pretty proud of that.
RK: [laughs] It was a pretty good moment for me.
PWCW: Have you approached your work, your writing any differently since hitting it big with The Walking Dead on AMC?
RK: You know, I hope not. That’s really important to me. I don’t want to...I mean, I guess everything that happens to a writer, it affects their work, so to a certain extent I must be evolving or at least I’m hopefully evolving. But I certainly don’t want anything that I’m doing on The Walking Dead show to specifically influence what I’m doing with The Walking Dead comic. Just because I feel like the comic book is without the show and I wouldn’t want there to be kind of, noticeable change in how the series progresses in the wake of a television show existing. So I’m trying to keep things as separate as possible but I may have little things creep in here and there and hopefully that will just improve my work and not change it drastically to the point where nobody likes it. Which is always a concern.
PWCW: San Diego Comic-Con is sneaking up on all of us now. Last year there was a pretty major booth for The Walking Dead, do you know what’s planned this year?
RK: Honestly, I think that our plans this year might actually be even bigger. I think last year, AMC really kind of pulled out all the stops but they didn’t really know how the show was gonna do and now that they’ve got a bona fide hit on their hands, I think they’re gonna go all out for Season 2. I’m hoping that we’ll have a 3-story zombie standing in front of the convention center or something like that. Zombie-shaped taxi cabs driving around the streets or maybe all the pedicabs can be dressed up to look like Rick’s horse from the pilot. I’m hoping we can do some stuff but it’ll definitely be at least as big as it was last year at Comic-Con so I’m sure there will be people dressed up like zombies terrifying me in the streets as I go from my hotel to the convention center so I’ve got that to look forward to.
PWCW: Finally, is there anything you can tell us about The Walking Dead Season 2 that you haven’t told anyone else yet?
RK: [laughs] It’s funny because there’s only like a set number of like, little things that have leaked out that I feel comfortable talking about so I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just roll out one of those things like, Hershell’s farm or possibly a romance for Glen,” and then everyone always ends that question with, “That you haven’t told anyone else.” So I’m like, “Aww, that derails everything, I’ve got nothing for this person!”
But I can say that I was reading recently online and I saw that somebody on my message board was complaining about the lack of zombies in the later three episodes of the first season. Where, you know, the pilot had a ton of zombies and then the second episode had a ton of zombies and then as the series progressed it was maybe one or two zombies in an episode. But they were cool zombies! They were good moments and everything but you know, seems like the first season probably was a little zombie-lite and I can say that they’re not gonna have that complaint when it comes to the second season.
I think that the stuff that we have planned is, you know, very character driven and drama-heavy and all that stuff but there’s also a ton of really cool zombie stuff that’s being worked out in the room here so I think people are really going to get their fill of zombies this season. And somehow still be hungry for more, so we’ll see.
PWCW: Hungry for more. Great zombie humor there.
RK: [laughs] Thank you.
